Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Offshore energy-producing platforms in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico are emitting twice as much methane, a greenhouse gas, than previously thought, according to a new study from the University of Michigan.
Researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind pilot-study sampling air over offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Their findings suggest the federal government's calculations are too low.
U-M's research found that, for the full U.S. Gulf of Mexico, oil and gas facilities emit approximately one-half a teragram of methane each year, comparable with large emitting oil and gas basins like the Four Corners region in the southwest U.S. The effective loss rate of produced gas is roughly 2.9%, similar to large onshore basins primarily focused on oil, and significantly higher than current inventory estimates.
Offshore harvesting accounts for roughly one-third of the oil and gas produced worldwide, and these facilities both vent and leak methane. Until now, only a handful of measurements of offshore platforms have been made, and no aircraft studies of methane emissions in normal operation had been conducted. Each year the EPA issues its U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory, but its numbers for offshore emissions are not produced via direct sampling.
The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, identified three reasons for the discrepancy between EPA estimates and their findings:
- Errors in platform counts: Offshore facilities in state waters, of which there are in excess of 1,300, were missing from the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
- Persistent emissions from shallow-water facilities, particularly those primarily focused on natural gas, are higher than inventoried.
- Large, older facilities situated in shallow waters tended to produce episodic, disproportionally high spikes of methane emissions. These facilities, which have more than seven platforms apiece, contribute to nearly 40% of emissions, yet consist of less than 1% of total platforms. If this emission process were identified, it could provide an optimal mitigation opportunity, the researchers said.
-- submitted from IRC
Journal Reference
Tara I. Yacovitch, Conner Daube, Scott C. Herndon. Methane Emissions from Offshore Oil and Gas Platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, Environ. Sci. Technol. (DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b07148)
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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Global emissions of methane have reached the highest levels on record. Increases are being driven primarily by growth of emissions from coal mining, oil and natural gas production, cattle and sheep ranching, and landfills.
Between 2000 and 2017, levels of the potent greenhouse gas barreled up toward pathways that climate models suggest will lead to 3-4 degrees Celsius of warming before the end of this century. This is a dangerous temperature threshold at which scientists warn that natural disasters, including wildfires, droughts and floods, and social disruptions such as famines and mass migrations become almost commonplace. The findings are outlined in two papers published July 14 in Earth System Science Data and Environmental Research Letters by researchers with the Global Carbon Project, an initiative led by Stanford University scientist Rob Jackson.
In 2017, the last year when complete global methane data are available, Earth's atmosphere absorbed nearly 600 million tons of the colorless, odorless gas that is 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over a 100-year span. More than half of all methane emissions now come from human activities. Annual methane emissions are up 9 percent, or 50 million tons per year, from the early 2000s, when methane concentrations in the atmosphere were relatively stable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @10:54AM (18 children)
Or is this another one of those faulty AGW models I keep hearing about.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:47PM (5 children)
This is the fox guarding the henhouse model. Who pays for the studies that estimate methane emissions from oil platforms? How do they get their data? Everything about the process is biased.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 14 2020, @05:03PM (4 children)
They are mostly based on emission factors provided by the EPA.
The misunderstanding is that they're intended to be precise, not necessarily accurate, since they're intended to be used to monitor trends.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 14 2020, @05:09PM (3 children)
So the fox has outsourced to the opossum? Chicks still keep disappearing without explanation.
Then, when Greta commissions her own study, it's also labeled as biased, and thwarted at every turn trying to get valid data from the sites.
The University study with flyover data is good, but will invariably be labeled as biased and incomplete too.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 14 2020, @05:22PM (2 children)
Science is hard. I'm sorry that conflicts with your oversimplified model of reality.
The EPA provided guidance for calculating emissions without direct monitoring, which was their job.
Direct monitoring will obviously be more accurate than calculated emissions.
This shocks no one who understands the domain.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:14PM
Not expecting simple, am expecting that the EPA is basically owned by industry, perhaps outlier industry players will be brought into line by the EPA, but the bulk of industry tells EPA what is reasonable.
Nothing shocking here, I lived in Houston (Clear Lake, by NASA), I had the daily tar dust settle on the cars.
Why did I live in Houston? Because the economy in the rest of the country was gutted (2003).
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:24PM
Either way, this passes my first and second gates -- a journal citation/in a presumably reputable one. Makes it much easier to filter stuff from "book"s that don't have anything to back up what they present on their "face".
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:52PM (1 child)
Just because Jim is guilty doesn't mean John is innocent.
They could both be committing the same crime, just in their own ways.
Prisons are full of criminals, presumably more than one of them is guilty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:54PM
Maybe the cows are like negroes... jailed but innocent.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:56PM (9 children)
I can't judge whether it's another "scare the rubes" study. Maybe. But, anyone who lives in or travels through oil country can probably tell you that a few metric buttloads of gas are routinely burned off at oil wells.
Houston, years ago, routinely had flames roaring out of smokestacks at the refineries. A lot of that has been cleaned up in the past - ohhhh - thirty years I guess.
The amounts of gasses burnt off would truly amaze anyone who has never been in oil country. TBH, it still kinda amazes me. That's a lot of potential income, just vented to the atmosphere! You would think that the oil companies would do everything in their power to capture it.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 14 2020, @01:47PM
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday April 14 2020, @04:03PM
You would think that the oil companies would do everything in their power to capture it.
Costs too much
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @04:07PM (5 children)
You won't like this, but what you described is a clear failure of capitalism. Instead of capturing that energy potential the owners decided they would rather burn off the troubleshom byproducts instead of investing in better infrastructure. Why? Because it would cost a lot to improve the refinery and the captured gasses wouldn't be worth nearly enough.
So how to solve this greed based problem? You guessed it! Government regulation to include the externalized costs of running the refinery. Environmental pollution, health problems, etc. Then you would see some pretty rapid upgrades to capture and clean the waste products. Yes that would probably end up with higher costs to consumers, but again those costs would otherwise be paid by environental destruction and human health.
You described a problem, I showed you the answer. Now is it possible for you to admit that government regulations are necessary in a lot of industries? Or will you retreat to your ideologically partisan talking points?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 14 2020, @04:09PM (1 child)
Somewhat ironically, they're flaring that gas to eliminate the very methane under discussion.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @05:10PM
Yes, but Runaway was talking about the amount of energy lost to such flaring. I decided it was a teachable moment, and besides the methane isn't simply eliminated but converted into air pollution without even the reward of producing electricity or heat.
We desperately need conservatives to bridge the propaganda gap preventing them from understanding why environmental regulation is so very important. Runaway came close, but GOP propaganda will prevent him from realizing that regulations are the only way to fix our systemic problems. Relying on the profit motive has massive failures since humans are good at finding shortcuts like dumping waste.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 14 2020, @05:35PM (2 children)
Ideological partisanship? Maybe you're confusing me with Fusty or someone?
I have acknowledged many times that sometimes regulation is necessary. In fact, I mentioned that Houston has cleaned up it's act tremendously in recent decades. And, I hope that I didn't sound disapproving of the clean up. In fact, I think the tone of my previous post indicates disapproval of venting all that "waste" gas to the atmosphere. Can we give the ideology schtick a break?
For the record, the doctrine of "Profit at all costs" that some seem to espouse can only hurt society. On the other hand, "ecology at all costs" doesn't make a lot of sense either. If we must not harm a blade of grass, then we all need to suicide now, and stop any more impact that mankind might have on Mother Nature. Let us all just turn into fertilizer, and let nature take it's course, alright?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @07:20PM (1 child)
Fustakritch is less partisan than you, just FYI.
And no, we can not drop the issue of ideological partisanship.
Any time Trump is criticized you come back with the super clever "TDS!" and proceed to ignore his corruption. He installed wolves to guard the henhouses. If you can't get that straight then there is no point in discussing how our views align since you support the antithesis of what I'm talking about.
Well, you say you don't support Trump, you say you voted 3rd party, but the lack of outrage over what he has done shows that you will continue to vote in or at best tolerate such evil shit. Don't come back with "but Obama" whataboutism, in case you haven't been paying attention there are no "saint obama" supporters on SN.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 15 2020, @12:19AM
Runaway is the same kind of sociopath Trump is, although in my estimation he's an induced case rather than a native-born one: all that matters is t3h feelz. His feelz. And everything and everyone else is subordinate to, subject to, and disposable in the pursuit of said feelz.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday April 24 2020, @02:54AM
Burning it produces CO2. But not burning is puts methane into the atmosphere, which is a far more powerful greenhouse gas.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday April 14 2020, @01:45PM (4 children)
It also means that the sinks may be more important than we realize. It could be methane-eating bacteria, in which case, we might have a means to lower methane content of atmosphere. It might be reactions with the ozone layer, means we might have underestimated a problem with that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 14 2020, @04:07PM (1 child)
If you look at the dramatic increse in atmoshperic methane concentration [wikipedia.org] you see that those sinks are not nearly up to the task.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 15 2020, @05:37AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:57PM (1 child)
》 methane eating bacteria
The problem with your theory is that methane floats, so unless you invent tiny little airplanes for these methane eating bacteria they won't be able to do any good.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday April 15 2020, @05:24AM
In what medium? Seems a pretty weird thing to say.